We have a few more secrets revealed, and are happy to announce our next presenters…

Writer, historian and urbanist, Leo Hollis believes that cities are constructed from people rather than buildings, and in this talk he will explore the future of the city and the need for what he calls “Social Urbanism.” Using examples from across the world, he suggests that we should consider citizenship when thinking about city-making, and pay attention to issues like trust, equality and sustainability as much as to technology, economics or design.

Hollis is the author of books on London and Paris, and his recent one “Cities Are Good For You: the Genius of the Metropolis” has become an international bestseller. He writes for a number of publications including the Guardian (UK) and Shareable.net.

Francesca Rossi is a professor of computer science at the University of Padova, Italy. Her research interests focus on artificial intelligence (AI), with a particular emphasis on preference modeling and reasoning, constraint processing, multi-agent systems, and voting theory. Rossi aims to generalize the scope and goals of sentiment analysis in order to understand preferences over several correlated items. She proposes to do so by exploiting and adapting notions and techniques from AI (such as knowledge representation, natural language processing, reasoning with uncertainty, and machine learning) and voting theory. On our stage she will share with us some findings of her research and elaborate on the present and future of AI.

Rossi has published over 170 papers in international conferences or journals, edited 16 volumes, and co-edited the Handbook of Constraint Programming.

And to spice it up we will add some eco-friendly music by Trashbeatz…

Trashbeatz was founded in 2000 with the purpose to teach people more about music and ecology in a playful and more creative way. With the workshop ‘Music with Trash’ the band toured all around Belgium. This is how it works: you start by building your own drum-kit out of trash. Then, with two drum-sticks-spoons, pots, pans, cans, barrels, or other “instrumental” trash you can learn about rhythm and dynamics. Once it is under control, you start playing as a band and are ready to create your own song. Afterwards a little performance is possible.

Want to be part of the band? Join us for TEDxGhent main event in June and get your ticket now! Pay online